Behind the double-headed eagle

The state emblem of the Russian Federation - the double-headed eagle. Source: ITAR-TASS

The majestic bird, which was restored as the country’s official emblem in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, traces its origins to the Byzantine era.

Although 23 years have passed since the collapse of
the USSR, in the minds of many foreigners the Soviet-era
hammer and sickles still a symbol of Russia.

However,
Russia's current state emblem is completely different, and its history dates all the
way back to the times
of the Byzantine Empire.

The state emblem of the Russian Federation
- the double-headed eagle - happens to be one of the oldest Indo-European
symbols. Its history is a mixture of Christianity, Paganism, Zoroastrianism,
the epochs of great empires and those of feudal fragmentation.

Entire states and
civilizations vanished, but the double-headed eagle continued to soar above the
people of Western Asia and Eastern Europe.

Here's how it evolved. The double-headed eagle
first appeared on the coat of arms of the great Hittite Empire, which occupied
the territory of present-day Turkey in the 17th-12th centuries BC.

In the early Middle Ages Europe's climate was much warmer than it is today. For example, in the 12th century lions and leopards could be found in southern Ukraine.

Killing a lion was a sign of valor. Only Grand Princes and selected members of the aristocracy were allowed to participate in this hunt, which gradually made this animal a heraldic symbol of nobility and courage.

There it was
later adopted by the heir of the Roman one-headed eagle, the Byzantine Empire.
It shortly became the symbol of Eastern Christianity and then spread across Christendom,
appearing on the coats of arms of Serbia and Montenegro, Germany (the Holy
Roman Empire) and Armenia.

The eagle "flew" over to Russia only in
the 13th century, replacing the trident - an ancient symbol of the ruling
dynasty. First the double-headed eagle appeared in Chernigov, in
present-day Ukraine, then in Vladimir (176 km west of Moscow), then in Moscow
itself.

After the fall of the Byzantium Empire in 1453,
Russia was left the only independent Orthodox country in the world.

The eagle subsequently
became Russia’s main official symbol towards the end of the 15th century, when
Grand Prince Ivan III, "the gatherer of the Russian lands", married Sophia
Palaiologina, the niece of the last emperor of Byzantium–
and thus rightly inherited the symbol of his wife’s kin. The eagle succeeded
another ancient Russian symbol of power, the lion.

As Ivan III’s grandson, Ivan the Terrible, became
the first Russian tsar, the two-headed eagle appeared on the first Russian coat
of arms and the tsar’s seal.

During Ivan’s reign, Muscovy annexed the Kazan and
the Astrakhan khanates, the Tatar feudal states and the remnants of the Golden Horde,
and began the annexation of the Siberian Khanate.

Therefore in the early 17th
century, the two-headed eagle began to be depicted with three crowns – to
symbolize the victory over the three khanates.

That is how Tsar Alexis himself,
the father of Peter the Great, explained this in the middle of the 17th
century. During Alexis’ reign, the scepter and the orb, which the eagle held in
his claws, were also added to denote the tsar as the “autocrat and the owner of
the land”.

Over the centuries of Russian history, the three
crowns have been assigned a great lot of different meanings. Some said that
they symbolized the primacy of the tsar’s power over both the government and
the church.

There is also an opinion that three crowns denote the tsar’s power
over Muscovy, Little Russia (later, Ukraine) and White Russia (now Belarus); or
that the three crowns mean that the Russian tsar is both the sovereign of East
and West… Whatever the truth may be, the three crowns remained on the coat of
arms throughout the history of Muscovy and the Russian Empire.

At times, other symbols were added to the coat of
arms. During the Polish occupation of Moscow in 1612, the Catholic royal lily
appeared on the eagle's chest. This was later substituted by St. George or by a
griffon, the symbol of the ruling Romanov dynasty.

According to Russian heraldic tradition, there has
always been a difference between large and small official coats of arms. The
large coat of arms, besides the eagle, also included the emblem of the Romanov
dynasty, as well as the emblems of the most important lands comprising the
Russian Empire.

The Russian emperor was concurrently the tsar of Poland,
Georgia, Siberia and the Grand Prince of Finland. In order to emphasize the
government's Christian character, Archangel Michael and Gabriel were placed
alongside the double-headed eagle.

After the February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional
Government removed the crowns. It is precisely the democratic
"downgraded" eagle that is seen on the monetary units of the Russian
Federation.

The scepter and orb were also removed. During the Civil War the
anti-Bolshevik powers reinstated the eagle as their coat of arms, but the
crowns were replaced with the cross.

The scepter and the orb once again
appeared in the eagle's claws, though the emblem was living on borrowed time by
then: After the Bolshevik victory the hammer and sickle was adopted as the
official emblem of the new state on July 6, 1923.

The hammer and sickle - symbols of the Soviet Union. Source: RIA Novosti

The double-headed eagle returned to Russia only after
the collapse of the USSR and a three-year study carried out by a special
commission. In 1993, following President Boris Yeltsin's decree, it was
reconfirmed as the symbol of the official coat of arms.

Flying in from the distant past and alighting in
Russia, the double-headed eagle continues to change, as if adapting to the
current political reality of its adoptive country.

Vladimir Khutarev has a Ph.D. in History and is
President of the Moscow City Division of the All-Russian Society for the
Preservation of Historical and Cultural Monuments.